by Jack Colrain
“I need eyes on Svoboda.”
“I see her,” Bailey chipped in. “She’s on the car wash roof.”
“You have a shot?”
“Not really.”
“Stand by.”
Daniel ran for the rear of the building shaped like a car wash and looked around. If Svoboda was up there, she had no shot on him, but she was smart enough to move between shots. “Palmer,” he whispered into the radio, can you get into a position overlooking the car wash?”
“Thirty seconds,” Palmer replied. Exactly that amount of time later, he radioed, “In position. No Svoboda.”
“She’s there,” Bailey insisted. “I can see her rifle and forearm.”
“She’s in the crawlspace between ceiling and roof...” Daniel thought aloud. “Both of you. When she moves, shoot her.”
“Copy.”
Daniel pulled the pin on a dye grenade and tossed it up on the roof. It went off in a red cloud, doing no harm—not even simulated harm—to Svoboda, but it told her that they knew where she was. She slithered out, her legs hanging down in front of Daniel for a moment. He fired at the same instant as Bailey and Palmer did, and three colored patches blossomed on Svoboda’s back.
“Dammit,” she muttered as she dropped to the ground.
“OpFor neutralized,” Daniel reported.
“Homies, End-Ex,” Hammond’s voice came over everybody’s radio. Daniel grinned; the exercise was over. “Your friendly neighborhood umpire reports that the defending team won.”
‘That was a dirty trick,’ Hope thought to him.
‘Actually, I’d call it more of a cheap trick than a dirty trick, but I’m happy with either. Would you like to learn it?’
‘Hell yes. It was more effective than the cheap and dirty trick I was setting up to pull on you. But, Daniel?’
‘Yes?’
‘Let us out of this stairwell first.’
Twenty-Three
Boston, MA.
“I’ll say this for the military,” Kinsella announced. “It beats the shit out of being beaten over the head with all that Black Friday crap that seems to last a month now.” The unit, both Homies and Webbies, was sharing an evening meal in the Mess.
“You don’t like Thanksgiving?” Bailey asked, amazed. “Man, family’s the most important thing, and that’s one thing I’m thankful for. Michelle sent me another picture of her and Sam; she got him in a little Puritan outfit—”
“Family’s definitely the important thing,” Evans agreed, “but what are we celebrating here?”
“Nothing, as far as I can tell,” Svoboda said. “July 4th, I can understand; an independence from a foreign ruler, but...” She trailed off as the other Webbies nodded their agreement.
“I think the British may celebrate that, too,” Rausch said drily, “for having thrown you all out.”
“It’s the beginning of the holiday season,” Bailey said. “I want to get home to see Sam’s first visit to Santa’s Grotto—”
“Everybody celebrates Christmas, right?”
“Chanukkah,” Ebrahimi said.
Daniel felt Hope’s bemusement at the unit’s banter and leaned in beside her. “I guess they don’t have Christmas or Hanukkah in China?”
“They have everything in the big cities—Chinese love festivals, and festivals are for business. Everybody loves an excuse to eat and drink more.”
“And outside the cities?”
“The Laba Festival is next month, but in the north, we celebrate the winter solstice with dumplings. Some form of midwinter celebration is universal, whatever the name of it.”
“So, you’re not offended by our decadent Western festivals?”
“Of course not. Everybody loves an excuse to eat and drink more, and see families.” Her face fell for a moment, and he felt a momentary pang of absence from her before she forced it away. “And it’s always good for business: The more festivals, the more food sold, the better.”
“Every Christmas movie ever made seems to be about family being important. Even Die Hard.”
Hope commented drily, “It’s very strange that you have only one or two festivals about family. Surely, they all are? Unless you’re a drunken glutton.”
“How do you mean?”
“All festivals are really about food and drink. Who wants to eat and drink alone?”
“Hermits?”
Hammond entered, and suddenly rapped on a desk. “I didn’t come in to visit the Exo-team to discuss our favorite holidays.”
“The Exo-team is a stupid name,” Bailey said. “It just doesn’t have a ring to it.”
“Echo Team would at least sound kind of military,” Evans agreed quietly. “Echo Team, I could see.”
“Until we’re alongside other units, and they split us into fireteams, and then suddenly there’s different echo teams,” Hope said.
“It’s definitely Hammond’s team,” Daniel added.
“So, it’s my team, no news there,” Hammond snapped. “Everybody, listen up. I hate to be the Grinch, but... We’re up.”
“Training or—”
“Training only in the sense that every experience is a learning experience,” Hammond answered. “We have an actual operation, and we move out at 05:00.”
Everyone straightened up, and they put their plates and glasses down. “Where to, Chief?” Evans asked.
“At 05:00, we fly out to Logan International, Boston. From there, we’ll stage at a rally point downtown, four blocks from the First Church of the Mozari.” Hammond’s eyes sought out Daniel. “West, you’ve been there before?”
“Yes, Chief.”
“Good. You’ll lead my Charlie fireteam, and I’ll lead Alpha. Captain Ying—” Hope nodded curtly as he spoke her name. “You’ll lead Bravo fireteam and select a leader for Delta team.”
When everybody had gone to get their gear, and what sleep they could, Hammond kept Daniel back for a moment. “You feeling up to it, West?”
Daniel thought for a moment. “Yes, Chief. Pretty damn confident.”
“That’ll take you some of the way, so that’s good. Don’t let it rule you, but don’t lose it either. Training is good for muscle memory, so it frees up thinking time, but it’s still not real; nobody’s actually trying to kill you in training. Tomorrow, if things go south, they will be.”
“Understood, Chief.”
“I bet it isn’t, really, because it can’t be till afterwards, but it’s nice of you to try to believe otherwise, West.”
Boston, MA.
The MV-22 Osprey skirted the edge of Logan International Airport and descended to a group of small hangars on the northwest, as far from the international passenger terminals as possible. Landed, the Osprey’s wing tilted up to take the prop blades out of anybody’s way. Chief Hammond hauled the door open and one of the air crew jumped down and opened a cargo hatch, sliding the first weapons crate out of the cargo space even before the ground crew reached it.
The unit grabbed their duffel bags and gear and hopped down onto the cement. One of the ground crew pointed towards the nearest small hangar. “Welcome to Boston. You can stow your gear in the Bonded Overflow building. Colonel Tucker has set up his C-In-C there.”
Daniel nodded, and passed by Hope. A section was partitioned off for their gear, and she put hers next to his.
One of the twidgets, a second lieutenant who looked like she should still be in high school, saluted, and he saluted back. “Team Hammond best get some chow-time,” she said. “Colonel Tucker will be calling a briefing for 19:00 sharp.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” Daniel said lightly. She left as if she couldn’t get away from them quickly enough. She probably thought having a rare antibody that meant you could wear alien technology meant you were halfway to joining the damn X-Men or something.
“You heard what the Shavetail said,” Evans commented. “Take your ease; eat. Make sure to hydrate.” Daniel suppressed a smile at that last; it was probably a sign of growing up in an active li
fe. And definitely good advice.
Dinner was good enough, but nobody talked much. Whatever they were here for, it wasn’t like the exercises they’d been used to at the Farm. “What do you think we’re doing here, Chief?” Daniel asked Hammond.
“We’ve been training to take on the Mozari. Have to start that sometime, but…”
“But if the church has ever had any contact with a real Mozari, I’ll eat my suit.”
“Me, too. This doesn’t feel like a frontline op to me. It feels...”
“Spooky?” Kinsella suggested. “I mean, like... spies and stuff.”
Chief Hammond nodded. “Yeah. Same shit, different day, then.”
“Yeah.”
At 18:50, Hammond led the team back into the hangar serving as Colonel Tucker’s base of operations. Three large projection screens were arranged in a slight curve at one end of the hangar, above a number of electronic consoles set up in a U-shape on battered folding tables. The center screen showed satellite pictures of a church and its grounds, with points of interest picked out in red and yellow. The other two screens showed coverage of the same church from opposing overhead angles, icons tracking the movement of vehicles and pedestrians on the ground. This feed, Daniel saw, was coming in live from a couple of drones with good zoom-functions. The foot patrols flagged by icons in the churchyard didn’t seem to be looking at either drone.
Boards were also standing around covered in still pictures—both surveillance and mugshots—of a variety of faces, and with maps and floor plans attached. Two concentric red circles were overlaid on a diagram of the downtown district. In the shadows behind the boards and screens was an RV trailer, and an officer was talking to someone at the door. There were officers and enlisted personnel from the Army and Marine Corps present, and what looked like the local Police Commissioner and captains. That was odd, to Daniel’s way of thinking. Why would the cops be in on a military exercise?
Along with the uniformed personnel, there were plenty of men and women in dark suits, with stars-and-stripes pins on their lapels. Feebs and spooks. From the paperwork on his clipboard, Daniel knew that there were suits from the FBI, CIA, NSA, Homeland Security, and ATF in on this op, but he had no idea which was which. He wondered how they could even tell each other apart either.
Everyone’s expression was grim, the cops most of all, and there was no Air Force presence, either, which there should have been if force projection against an enemy state—human or Mozari—was in the offing.
“We’re soldiers,” he muttered, thinking of Hope’s words, “not... not some secret police.” He hoped not, at least, but his train of thought was derailed by Colonel Tucker’s emergence from the RV.
There were three types of field officers—among majors and colonels—in Hammond’s experience so far. There were the wannabe Pattons, who only knew the movie version of the famed general, and who swaggered and blustered like schoolyard bullies; there were the desk-jockey officers and bean-counters; and there were good professional soldiers who kept in the game and who you could trust at your back or side. Thankfully, Colonel Tucker was one of the third type. He was tall, not over-muscled, and had the air of the dependable stranger in an old Western movie.
“Take your ease and listen up.” Colonel Tucker waited precisely three seconds for them to do so, with the agents, spooks, and cops looking for chairs, and the troops squatting or leaning against tables, and then he continued.
“We have confirmation that those responsible for the Glen Darroch attack are members of a religious cult who have come to worship the Mozari. This cult is based in the former church of Saint Martin, in downtown.” He indicated the map with the concentric rings on it. “Boston PD has blocked off the streets for four blocks around the church building, but there are plenty of people inside the exclusion zone. Some are church members while others are people who simply live there and couldn’t get out.” He cleared his throat. “What we’re after are hardcore cultists responsible for several attacks, including the elementary school mass shooting that happened last week. The local law enforcement and federal agencies have been trying to find evidence of a link between the church’s archimandrite and perpetrators of these atrocities for months. Finally, ELINT sources have coughed up the goods in the form of a signal intercept.” Tucker held up a remote and clicked it.
Charles Kebbell’s voice, so familiar from TV interviews, came out of ceiling-mounted speakers:
“Are you ready?”
“Always, Archimandrite,”
“Good, Brian. You’ve always been someone I can rely on. I don’t think I could have trusted anyone else with this.”
“Thanks, sir.”
“Please, never mind the formalities. There’ll be plenty of those afterwards, when the responses and replies—of whatever kind—bring the issues at hand out into the open for proper debate and... I guess I can say education.”
“I guess you can.”
“Then there’s no more to be said for the moment. You know what to do, and when. All that’s left is to wish you success.”
“And luck?”
“If the Mozari have taught us anything, it’s that we must learn how to make our own luck, together.”
“Of course.”
“That said, yes; go make some luck, Brian.”
The speakers hissed for a moment, then fell silent. Daniel felt ice along his spine, and an ache in his hands. When he looked down, he was surprised to see that he was gripping the edge of a folding chair hard enough to bend it. Kebbell was bad enough, but the other voice... That was the voice of the man who had carried out the orders, he knew. A man who had pulled the trigger in an elementary school, ending the lives of so many innocent children, and for what? Was that the tone he would have heard from the gunman who’d killed Elizabeth? The tone of just another boring day at the office?
“The other voice,” Colonel Tucker said, “was that of one Brian Dene, who, as you might have surmised, was one of the three shooters at that school. His body was identified by fingerprints since they carried no ID. The phones used were burners, but catching the signal was a lucky break. Because of voice recognition software, Kebbell can’t claim that this wasn’t done in his name.
“We have cordoned off a four-block radius around the church, as I mentioned. The cultists are a mix of hostiles and noncombatants, and they are armed for bear.” He paused to let that sink in. “We could go in with air support and armor and pacify the area that way. The noncombatants are, however, a problem. We can’t use that approach against human shields.”
That made sense to Daniel. He wondered whether it was Tucker who had reminded them of that issue.
“A protracted siege,” Tucker continued, “would give them time to dig in and threaten their unarmed members; they’re also well-supplied. The Joint Chiefs, however, see this as an opportunity to evaluate the Exo-team’s Mozari-derived suits, tactics, and stealth capabilities. It won’t be the same as hitting at the Mozari, but at least we can hit at their influence.” There was a murmur of approval, and then Tucker went on to give a long description of the various individuals in the cult, to the pride of the cops and agents, and the boredom of the troops.
The sun had set when Tucker was left alone with Team Hammond and a couple of Marine Corps officers. The colonel had a captain pass a bottle of bourbon around before he began speaking again. “OK, here’s the skinny,” he began. “The OpFor will be actual, live Mozzarellas.” A ripple of polite laughter followed. “The US squad will be divided into Alpha and Delta fireteams, the international squad into Bravo and Echo fireteams. Infil points will be in the parking lot north of the zone of action for Alpha, and by the crematorium to the southwest for Bravo fireteam. Post-action evac point should be from the church driveway. Medevac will be on standby. We have intel that Kebbell’s lieutenants from other church strongholds along the Eastern Seaboard will be arriving at first light for a meeting with their so-called archimandrite, and it would be nice to black-bag all of them.”
“Norinco Type 56,” Hope muttered. Daniel nudged her with an elbow.
“Close enough. They’re full battlefield weapons, so beware of their over-penetration risk to noncombatants. They’ve been running three watches, changing at 06:00, 16:00, and midnight. The fireteams will be inserted at 05:30. Their night watch should be tired, and their morning watch still in the sack... Don’t think it’ll be easy.”
“Should my unit be issued with railguns for this op?” Hammond asked.
“Not for the most part. The cultists are armed with regular small arms, and don’t have access to anything like the Exo-suits. The last thing we want is massive overpenetration taking out human shields or demolishing large chunks of historic Boston.”
“Understandable.”
“That said, designate two of each team as auxiliaries to carry railguns for support if absolutely necessary. We can’t use armor or air support in the center of one of our own cities, so the railguns can be a measure of last resort.” Tucker stood and saluted casually. “Get some rest, and then be ready to kick ass at first light.”